Tag: Freshworks

Singapore – Cloud-based SaaS company Freshworks Inc. has announced key position changes, with Dennis Woodside appointed as the new CEO and president to succeed Girish Mathrubootham, the company’s founder and current CEO. 

Woodside brings great leadership experience to his new role. He joined Freshworks as president in September 2022 and since then has accelerated the company’s investments in enterprise-grade products and driven increased focus on the growth of mid-market and enterprise customers.

Prior to joining Freshworks, Woodside also served as the chief operating officer of Dropbox, helping grow revenue from $250m to $1.3b and ultimately raising over $1b in a successful IPO in 2018. He also held various sales and strategy leadership roles at Google from 2003 to 2014, including serving as CEO of Motorola Mobility after Google acquired the company in 2012. 

Additionally, before his long tenure at Google, Woodside was a consultant at McKinsey & Co. He currently serves on the board of the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula in California and previously served on the board of the American Red Cross from 2016 to 2022 and on the board of ServiceNow from 2018 to 2022.

Effective immediately, Woodside’s appointment comes as current CEO and founder Mathrubootham moves to the new role of executive chairman. 

Since founding Freshworks in 2010, Mathrubootham has transformed Freshworks from a fledgling startup in Chennai into a leading SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, with products that make it easy for every business to delight their employees and customers. He steered Freshworks through an IPO on Nasdaq in September 2021, making Freshworks the first India-born SaaS firm to trade on a US exchange. 

Under Mathrubootham’s leadership, the business has grown to serve more than 67,000 customers globally, powered by approximately 4,900 talented employees operating globally in 13 locations.

Now, in his new role as executive chairman, Mathrubootham will remain highly engaged with Freshworks’ product vision, customers, and employees. He will work across the company to bring long-term vision to life and consult with Woodside on strategic decisions. 

The transition frees him up to spend more time with Freshworks’ product teams in India and with customers globally and to stay engaged with other external stakeholders.

Mathrubootham will remain the chairman of Freshworks’ board of directors, and Woodside will also remain a member of the same board. 

Speaking on the transition, Mathrubootham said, “When I first proposed this next step to the Freshworks Board, we were starting to chart the next phase of our company’s journey. We brought Dennis on board to partner with me on crafting an ambitious growth plan, and my hope was that he could eventually lead the team of talented employees around the world to execute it, which would allow me to spend more time on the long-term product vision, innovation, and AI strategy.” 

He added, “Dennis has a deep understanding of Freshworks’ business, customers, and our employees, and a strong track record of building and scaling large global teams—he is the right leader to become our next CEO. I’m thrilled to announce this transition.”

Meanwhile, on his appointment, Woodside shared, “As I step into the role of CEO, I am deeply honoured to build upon Girish’s remarkable legacy. What he has created is truly special. Our mission and strategy remain the same. We stand before extraordinary opportunities and have the right foundation to make them possible—a winning combination of our strong focus on delighting customers and our product portfolio and innovation. I’m committed and excited to continue our journey of growth.”

Singapore – Freshworks, a cloud-based customer service software company, has formally appointed Mika Yamamoto as its newest chief customer and marketing officer. This appointment comes after her outstanding performance in spearheading the go-to-market strategy for the company’s comprehensive global business software portfolio.

For this new role, Mika envisions introducing the end-to-end customer experience with Freshworks by working with the marketing and customer success departments.

In particular, she believes that doing so would accelerate the company’s growth while also giving their clients the best solutions.

Following this appointment, Mika shared her enthusiasm, stating, “I am excited to join Freshworks to be a part of its journey to become a multi-billion-dollar software company and to focus on a segment of companies and people I have a great passion to serve.”

“My whole career has been spent on transforming go-to-market approaches and customer experiences within global companies to steepen the growth curve. I truly believe that bringing the end-to-end customer experience with marketing and customer success teams together at Freshworks will help accelerate growth while keeping our customers at the heart of all we do,” she added.

Meanwhile, Dennis Woodside, president at Freshworks, said, “Mika’s combined CMO and CXO roles have given her a unique perspective that has ultimately led to innovative, measurable changes for employees, customers, and prospects.”

“She has a long-standing track record of leading global and diverse customer experience teams and delivering exceptional go-to-market results at large public technology companies with multi-domain businesses serving customers big and small. Her know-how and desire to build and scale a large, enduring company make her a great addition to our Freshworks leadership team,” he added.

In her previous role, Mika served as the global vice president and the chief marketing and customer engagement officer and led the company’s data, marketing, digital transformation, and customer experience efforts.

Prior to joining F5, she also formerly worked for SAP as the chief digital marketing officer and CMO of SMB. She has held top positions at Amazon Books, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Stores, Gartner, and Accenture. At the same time, she also became the SVP and general manager of Marketo at Adobe after it was acquired.

Singapore – Freshworks Inc. has announced that Styli, a fashion e-commerce brand under the Landmark Group, has established Freshdesk and Freshchat to enhance customer support operations.

Freshchat’s advanced automation features streamline manual processes. At the same time, Freshdesk’s intuitive dashboard empowers team supervisors to monitor performance effectively.

With the help of this AI-powered automation, Styli has significantly enhanced its average resolution time by 42%, leading to heightened customer loyalty through exceptional experiences.

Rana Abdel-Razak, customer experience manager at Styli, emphasized the significance of customer experience for building brand loyalty and expressed how Freshworks has played a pivotal role in elevating its vision and fostering even greater trust with customers.

Moreover, Sandie Overtveld, SVP for Freshworks APAC and MEA expressed delight in extending Freshworks CX suite of products to Styli, emphasizing that Freshworks’ partnership with Styli has set new benchmarks for customer support in the rapidly evolving e-commerce industry, further solidifying its commitment to excellence in customer service.

Singapore – Following the company’s recently-concluded event Refresh 2021, software company Freshworks has announced the launch of Freshstack, a customer relationship management (CRM) suite built for the unique needs of startups that unifies customer support, sales, and marketing teams. 

The product bundle helps startups personalize marketing to generate pipeline and deliver effortless omnichannel service for faster growth, at an affordable price point that’s easy to deploy and manage.

Said suite combines three Freshworks’ products: Freshdesk, Freshsales and Freshmarketer.

Freshdesk is an omnichannel customer support solution with a new unified inbox and collaboration functionality across support, sales and marketing teams, to help businesses resolve issues faster. Meanwhile, Freshsales is a unified sales intelligence solution with context-driven forecasting and pipeline management. Lastly, Freshmarketer is marketing automation software that enables AI-driven lead generation, email personalization and send optimization.

Speaking about the suite launch, Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and founder of Freshworks, said, “Startup founders should ensure that their developers are focused on building their core technology, not babysitting their CRM stack. From day one, Freshworks has built products that democratize access to modern, easy-to-use software. Freshstack builds on that commitment by helping the titans of tomorrow get going faster today.”

The combination of Freshworks applications helps give startups what they need to instantly get up and running with a CRM platform that attracts new customers, builds lasting relationships with existing users and scales as their customer base grows. Companies can get going with up to US$3,000 in credits for Freshstack, as part of the Freshworks Startup Program.